Strawberry Lipgloss
by Marisa Cadena
Marisa Cadena, Calavera de Azúcar, Oaxaca, digital photograph, 2009. Courtesy of the author.
Strawberry Lipgloss
Marisa Cadena | AUG 2024 | Issue 36
It’s been over twenty years now and with each passing year, the beginning of the story changes. New smells, sounds, and breezes emerge. Others get lost. Voices change and sunny days become cloudy. I had forgotten that one afternoon, when he met me at school and we walked to the zócalo, getting caught in a torrential summer downpour that soaked us to our underwear. My pale blue skirt, transparent and clinging to my thighs. How could I have forgotten that day?
We sought refuge in a Mediterranean restaurant we frequented, oddly enough, for their french fries. After the rain had subsided, we sat on the curb and pointed to objects in the street; he tested my Spanish vocabulary; and I—his English. I had never needed to know what a llanta was before; I had only been driving for six months. He struggled pronouncing the “th” in “birthday”—inspired by a card in a shop window. “Burtday,” he would say over and over, bringing us to full belly laughs at his every attempt. I recently found the photograph that proved it really happened, inside my memorabilia chest, tucked in with the piles of letters he had sent over the three years we were apart. I have fuzzy memories of me, sixteen or seventeen, sitting at my desk with an English-Spanish dictionary in hand, searching for the perfect word, feeling self-conscious over my conjugation and grammar (I still do). And it was he who taught me, unintentionally, that I wasn’t Mexican. Or rather, not the kind I thought I was. For the first time, I began questioning my Mexican card-holding status which meant one thing in Michigan and another in Mexico. I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain it.
The color of the shirt he wore that day changes as the years go on. Sometimes it’s a simple white tee with black jeans and black boots. His thick dark hair slicked back so it didn’t appear as long as it was. Sometimes he’s in a plaid button-down, sleeves rolled, the top two unbuttoned at the collar. His hair, a little softer, a patch falls in front of his brown forehead as he smooths it back with his left hand. Did he have his guitar with him? The one he would later carve my initials into? I don’t remember where the first kiss happened, just the lightning—my chest unable to contain my hammering heart beating against my ribcage, my lungs not big enough to hold his breath that I inhaled as if my life depended on it—and the taste of my strawberry lip gloss.
+
I was sixteen years old and refused to take “no” for an answer (a philosophy I have maintained to this day). I had somehow managed to finagle my way into a ‘linguistic and cultural immersion’ trip to Oaxaca, Mexico for a select handful of Advanced Spanish students, picked from the two local high schools. Not only was I not in Advanced Spanish, I often skipped my lower level class and barely did any homework. I aced the tests, however, and had great pronunciation gracias a mis abuelos. While classes bored me, I adored our instructor, Mr. Myers, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered man with round, pink cheeks and a sheepish smile that seemed to imply he knew my secrets. It was Mr. Myers who advocated for me to join the trip, perhaps tossing in my Mexican card to stack the deck in my favor, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Harris, the other high school’s Spanish teacher, who would be on the ground leading the group to Oaxaca. It wasn’t until after she knew me that she had a valid reason for contempt, but she put up a fight from the start based solely on an argument for logistics. In the end, however, Mr. Myers' campaign to allow me on the trip was successful.
The ten or eleven of us students were divided up to stay with host families in order to get the ‘real life’ experience of Oaxaca. I was paired with my friend, Karen. Tall, raven-haired and slightly pigeon-toed, she was the perfect girl on paper. She got straight A’s, was on student council and the track team and always had a nice-guy boyfriend. After school, Karen and I would hang out at her house, drink her mother’s Franzia and get high. One afternoon, we got stoned and sprinkled catnip onto the fur of one of her two cats and watched as the other wrestled it for a taste. We were rolling on the floor laughing, the cats just as stoned, rolling all over each other. We never got caught. We were good liars. We took this same sense of invincibility with us to Mexico.
In the first days, I didn’t understand a single word anyone said. Karen, whose Spanish homework I would deftly copy before it was due at the beginning of class, was my impromptu interpreter. I was just in shock and over-stimulated because I soon acclimated and participated in lively discussions around the kitchen table with our hosts, the Rodríguez family. We tackled a variety of topics ranging from the art of boxing to the dancing of Michael Jackson, from natural disasters to gastronomy and everything in between.
The bedroom Karen and I shared had a window that opened to the courtyard and one in the bathroom that opened to the street. A modest room, bright white with two twin beds and a night table set between them, with white tiled flooring and a dark wood armoire for our clothing. Every morning, the bathroom window was our phonograph to the comings and goings of the street. I would wake to hear a cacophony of men announcing the sale of various necessities such as oranges, propane and water. “¡Naranjas! ¡Veinte por diez! ¡Gaaaas Gaaaas! ¡Agua! Aguaaaa! ¡Agua!” in short-long-short mumbled, sing-song enunciations. The latter of which was completely indecipherable to me until I physically crossed paths with the vendor, weeks later, riding his bike whilst pulling a gigantic cart filled with five gallon jugs of water. What I had guessed to be a challenged person running through the streets shouting a confused greeting to each new day, was in fact the local water seller’s chant.
The other students and I spent our days attending classes at the Instituto Cultural, studying language and arts. I had difficulty concentrating, wanting to be in the calle, in the streets with the real people, exploring the magical city. I wanted to have an adventure. Sitting in a hot and stuffy classroom with a bunch of teens from the Midwest was last on my list. I couldn’t even feign interest in the art class, which was weaving, and although I had considered myself artistic, I was terrible. I found it tedious and was easily distracted. The instructor, Carolina, standing about four feet tall with a permanent smile, would come by and check on my work. Upon seeing my progress, she would shake her head in disappointment, “Ay, Marisa. Es muy mal. No tienes colores. ¡Muy mal!” To which I would explain that I was a purist, I liked it simple. Truth was, it was a whole ordeal to weave in colors, let alone shapes and patterns. My crooked lines were less noticeable in monochromatic form. I eventually gave in and integrated two lines. Blue. It still looked like shit.
The zócalo was where I wanted to be. In Mexico, a zócalo is a plaza, the pulsating heart of the city. At the very center of Oaxaca’s, was a pavilion of sorts, a rotund structure most often used as a stage for the local orchestra or for special occasions like regional dances or children’s performances. Around the pavilion were labyrinths of sidewalks, woven between trees, benches, and lush landscaping enclosed by short brick walls about a foot tall. Shoe-shiners set up shop under the generous canopies of the tall trees.
The buildings on the outermost rim framing the park were filled by restaurants, shops, an internet café, fabric store, newspaper stand and a camera shop that doubled as a money exchange. The restaurants all had tables outside: prime real estate for people watching and listening to the mariachi and marimba players positioned in between the establishments. Serenades came with a fee. Street children approached patrons selling trinkets, handmade bracelets and wooden bookmarks, or with a full 1920’s cigar-girl kit of sorts filled with candies, chicle, cigarettes and packs of peanuts. Sometimes they would sing, extending their blackened palms; others, called for their comrades to form human pyramids. Pesos for performances. Their mothers, if they weren’t orphans, were usually in the park, clothed in traditional huipil, watching. Outside at the café tables, hours upon hours could be spent nursing a beer or coffee, absorbing and observing the street, the colors, the people.
On one end of the zócalo was the government palace, regularly the site of protests and gatherings of indigenous people from the outlying villages. At night, the dispossessed lined up against the building, wrapped in blankets, lying tight together. Bright-colored sardines. During the day, they cooked on comales, sharing meals with one another; the aroma from toasting tortillas filled the air, masking the scent of urine. At the opposite end was a massive, beautiful cathedral, host to quinceñeras and weddings as well as standard mass. Next to the church was El Marqués, a restaurant by day turned dancing spot with live music in the evening. Our second night in Oaxaca, a handful of us students, the “cool” ones, made friends with a few locals who invited us to drink and dance. Women with baskets waltzed between spinning couples, selling roses and gardenias. Roses were for lovers, our new friends informed us, but the gardenias they gifted, each of us clutching a fistful of stems wrapped in rubber bands, were offerings of friendship—thus confirming their innocence. It was later that first week, at Pizza, Pasta y Mas, the restaurant next to El Marqués, that my fate was sealed. My sixteen-year-old universe, forever altered.
He was there.
I was standing across the street in the park with Karen and a few others when I felt his eyes on me. I know exactly what shirt I was wearing. It was a boxy, skater-girl top with shiny blue, unbreathable fabric. I was hot and sweaty. I looked up to meet his gaze.
He smiled.
I smiled.
And so it began.
Marisa Cadena’s words appear in New World Writing, Eclectica, Elizabeth Ellen’s Hobart, and Babes of the Abyss, a book on the artwork of A.J. Springer. She is currently seeking representation for her memoir about her experience as a light-skinned Mexican American moving alone to Mexico at 19. Her cocktail recipes are featured in New York Magazine, Health Magazine, and a few books and websites. Marisa is a producer and co-host of People at the Core Podcast and The Palace Reading Series in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where she lives with her perfect pup and husband.